MacStories Weekly: Issue 34
In this issue: The Incident, iOS Apps for Students Preparing for Exams, Eric’s Home screen, plus the usual Workflow Corner, Weekly Q&A, Tip, Links, and recap of MacStories articles.
MACSTORIES RECOMMENDS
Great apps, accessories, gear, and media recommended by the MacStories team.
The Incident
A few weeks ago we thought that The Incident had been abandoned, but to our delight, it is alive and well. The Incident received an update last week and launched on the Apple TV, but best of all, there’s a new multiplayer mode.
The Incident is a simple game: just tilt your iOS device (or Siri Remote) to make the character (Frank) run from side to side and tap to jump, all so that Frank can avoid the miscellaneous falling objects, whether it is a cactus, taxi, or garden gnome. The retro 8-bit pixel art and chiptune soundtrack make this game a complete delight to play. Made by Matthew Comi and Neven Mrgan (with music by Cabel Sasser), it’s the game they created years before creating the ambitious Space Age (which we also love).
This month’s update and launch on the Apple TV also brings with it a new feature; a “Coincidents” multiplayer game mode. Coincidents requires an Apple TV, but it means that up to four people can play. Each person controls a character (using a mix of the Siri Remote, an iOS device, or Apple TV compatible game controller) and it’s a race to see who can reach the top first.
MACSTORIES COLLECTIONS
iOS Apps for Students Preparing for Exams
Fantastical 2
Adding your exam dates and times onto your calendar is very important, but in addition, it can also be helpful to add your study plans and any revision lectures to your calendar as well. The default iOS calendar app is fine, but Fantastical is better – a lot better. With Fantastical you can enter new events using natural language, set time and geofence alerts for your reminders, and it works with iCloud, Google, Exchange, and other accounts.
Clear
If you don’t already use a task management app or to-do list, Clear is a great app to start with. As you prepare for exams and tests, you’ll want to keep a list of topics you need to revise or chapters of the textbook that you need to read. Clear keeps things simple, with just the core features of a task management app that you’d need, and packages it all together in a really unique and fantastic design.
Grafio
If you’re studying economics or another subject which has diagrams, you might want to recreate those key diagrams in Grafio for your exam revision. This app has all the key tools you need to create a diagram that looks like it has come straight from a textbook. Particularly useful is that you can import photos into Grafio, so if you take a photo of your hand-drawn diagram (or a photo of one from a textbook), you can then draw on top of it in Grafio. Once you’ve finished drawing a diagram you can save it to your Camera Roll, upload it to Dropbox, or open it in another app.
Notes
Apple’s Notes app got a substantial update with iOS 9 and whilst I wouldn’t recommend it for detailed subject notes (it’s still a bit limited in formatting options), it is a great option for brief notes and those topics which require some rough sketches or diagrams. I say that because particularly if you’re using an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil, it now has some fantastic sketching tools – complete with a ruler that you can use in conjunction with the Apple Pencil.
If you need something more substantial than the Notes app, I’d recommend our previous picks, OneNote or Evernote.
Penultimate
If a lot of your revision is drawing diagrams, but you don’t need to make them neat and tidy with something like Grafio, you might want to try Penultimate (iPad only). It’s also a great choice if you want to handwrite your answers to questions directly on your iPad. Its drawing tools aren’t quite as good as the Notes app, but they’re good, and they support the Apple Pencil (and other styluses). A particularly great feature of Penultimate is that it comes built-in with a number of templates, from graph paper, lined paper (of varying heights), dotted paper, and a whole lot more. It can also sync your sketches directly to Evernote.
Powerpoint
There are a number of flash card apps in the App Store, but I’ve been pretty dissapointed in most of them. Instead, I think using Powerpoint (or alternatively, Keynote) is a better option. All you need to do is create a slide for the question, and then another slide for the answer, and repeat this for however many questions you have. Plus, if you have an Apple Watch you can control the “presentation” directly from your watch.
Related Collections
Apps for Students, Vol. 1 - Classic MacStories Weekly #31
Apps for Students, Vol. 2 - MacStories Weekly #15
TIPS
Tips and tricks to master your apps and be more productive.
There are some nice touches in Gboard, Google’s custom keyboard for the iPhone and iPad. When searching for emoji, for instance, you can try out different expressions or words associated with a particular emoji, and Google will often return results for you. Try with “Nooooo”, “thinking”, or “party” to see what I mean.
Also, while Gboard doesn’t have 3D Touch support to control the cursor like the default Apple keyboard, you can swipe on the search bar – both on the iPhone and iPad – to move the cursor and speed up text selection.
SHORTCUTS CORNER
Get help and suggestions for your iOS shortcuts and productivity apps.
Member Requests
Question: As amazing as the iPhone 6s Plus camera is for shooting video, I find it cumbersome to sort through multiple videos with different resolutions and/or framerates. For instance, I have 4K/30fps videos as well as 1080p60fps, 1080p120fps, and 720p240fps. All are amazing for their intended use, but sorting them is madness!
Is it possible to build a workflow that would search the camera roll for resolution and/or framerate and copy all matching videos to a new album? (Scott, @scott_briscoe)
We can approach this problem in two ways, Scott:
- Filter videos by resolution;
- Thanks to Workflow 1.5, filter by frame rate as well.
Filtering by video resolution is pretty straightforward: you can choose the resolution to filter videos with using a menu at the top; the value you pick is saved with its width parameter to a variable. If you want to add more resolutions to the mix, remember to save the Width variable for each option like I did for 720p and 1080p.
Then, we can use the Filter Images action – which also supports videos – to filter items where the media type is “Video” and the width is the value picked from the menu. Make sure that the Filter action uses “All of the following are true” to match conditions, otherwise all kinds of videos from your library will be returned. At the end, all found videos (I set the workflow to look for the last 10 videos) will be saved into an album of your choice.
The other way, which is based on a new option in Workflow 1.5, is to filter videos by frame rate. Using the same structure of the example above, we can build a workflow that asks for frame rates and then saves a variable with, say, the values for 30 and 60 FPS videos.
However, because frame rates can be variable, I’d recommend filtering for values around the frame rate of your choice. For instance, if you’re looking for a 30 FPS video, I’d suggest looking for videos with a frame rate between 25 and 35 to compensate for the variability of frame rates. My workflow does it by calculating a difference of 5 for the FPS variable.
Then, in the Filter action, we can check for frame rate greater than the lowest value but smaller than the highest one, making sure that we’re filtering for a video media type and that “All” criteria are matched. You can choose how many of the latest videos from your library you want to fetch, and you can then save everything to an album of your choice at the end. (The Album itself could be a variable picked from a menu if you want.)
I’m leaving it up to you to play around with the workflows and experiment. You could combine checking for resolution and frame rates in the same workflow (say, if you want to check for 1080p videos at 60 FPS shot on an iPhone 6s) or you could add other menus or make this work from the action extension. I think this template is a nice demonstration of the new video filtering capabilities in Workflow 1.5.
You can download the workflows here and here.
Question: Do you have a workflow or other method of exporting browser cookies from iOS? I haven’t been able to find any way of doing it, even using iCab. Maybe there is a workflow that could capture cookies from a temporary session from the in-app browser? I am trying to automate a process that’s behind a Captcha. (Shane)
Unfortunately, iOS apps can’t export cookies stored in Safari, which means that Workflow can’t access whatever happens in its in-app web view based on Safari View Controller (new in version 1.5.). Apple built iOS with clear sandboxing restrictions, and this is one of those cases where apps cannot request access to that functionality. I don’t personally know of any third-party browser with that sort of feature, but if you’re trying to automate a captcha, I think it could be done using Python. I’ll leave it up to Club members to send us ideas about this.
Question: I’d like a way to easily move a sheet in Ulysses to Evernote for storage. (Mike Burch, @mike_burch)
We can’t move a sheet from Ulysses on iOS to Evernote – we can copy it to Evernote, and it’s pretty easy to do so with Workflow. With one caveat: Workflow currently doesn’t support Ulysses’ TextBundle file format to combine plain text and images in a single file. For now, I’d recommend exporting from Ulysses as Markdown and using the Workflow action extension to save your text to a new note in Evernote for archival.
In Ulysses, hit the share icon in the top right corner, select Text > Markdown from the title bar menu, and hit the share button again. Choose ‘Send to’, pick the Workflow action extension, and then run this workflow. Your Markdown text will be converted to rich text for Evernote and you’ll be asked to pick a title for the new note and a destination notebook.
Question: Is it possible to automatically replace text within a particular app after running a text transformation workflow via the share sheet?
Let me give you an example:
- I select some text in my text editor (Drafts, 1Writer, etc.)
- I “Share…” the selected text and execute an extension (e.g. a Pythonista script or Workflow) to modify the text in some way.
- I do something with the text via the automation app.
- Next, I want to replace the text I originally selected in my text editor with the output of the text processing workflow.
Is it possible to have the workflow extension action do the actual pasting for me? (Ryan Benz)
I’m going to assume that it’s okay if we use Drafts for this, Ryan. We can achieve what you want, and we can even do it without leaving Drafts, but the caveat is that we can’t use the iOS ‘Share’ button of the copy & paste menu. We have to launch a workflow with a Drafts action.
To do this, we have to tell Workflow which text we want to modify, its position in a draft (so we can share entire drafts or a selection inside a draft), and we need to provide a draft’s unique ID so Workflow can go back to it and replace selected text with a modified version. All of this is possible thanks to Drafts’ template tags and script actions.
First, I installed Phillip Gruneich’s replace range script action to normalize how selection ranges are generated. If some text is selected in Drafts, the action outputs its start and length values; if no text is selected, values for the entire draft are returned.
Then, from a second Drafts action we can include a step for Phillip’s one (which is required, so make sure to install it first) and build a template to share the draft’s metadata and selected text with Workflow. We’ll use a process similar to what I do for Club MacStories requests: using plain text tags, we’ll specify metadata before the actual text and use regex match groups (new in Workflow 1.5) to isolate them.
At this point, the second action will open the iOS share sheet, where you can run the Workflow extension and select our workflow. In a second, the draft will be update with the selected text transformed – like magic.
Behind the scenes, Workflow separates values for selection ranges and UUID from the selected text, and it applies a Change Case conversion to the text. You can change this to whatever you want as long as the text is saved to a Replace variable at the end.
Last, Workflow uses the replaceRange option of the Drafts URL scheme to re-open the draft and replace the selected text with the new version. And because it runs from the action extension, the transition is seamless and the selection in the draft stays active.
I’m pretty proud of this workflow – it works quite beautifully and it’s fast. To make it work, you can download Phillip’s Drafts action, my action, and the workflow here.
Question: The photo management workflow Federico made for selecting photos to rename and export to iCloud Drive is great. Instead of entering a name for each photo, is there a way to give one name, such as “Border Collie”, and have the workflow rename the selected pictures sequentially? This would be great for grouping similar pictures taken at a location or with a similar subject. (Steve)
The trick here, Steve, is to set a base file name initially (e.g. “Border Collie”) and then create a Count variable that starts at 0. Every time the workflow runs for each selected picture, the variable counts up by 1 so you end up with photos renamed as “Border Collie - 1”, “Border Collie - 2”, etc. If you’d like to format the name differently, just change the position of the fileName and Count variables in the Text action inside the Repeat block.
If you don’t want to save pictures to iCloud Drive, you can swap the ‘Save File’ action for something else.
You can download the workflow here.
Question: I have been thinking about my backup strategy for my MacBook Air. Between my files on Dropbox, apps that can be re-downloaded from the App Store, and the installer files that I have stored away in my Synology, there is not much that I do not have immediately accessible in the event of a catastrophic hardware failure. I can make up the rest by using Arq to backup to Dropbox. To save space on Dropbox, I would like to avoid uploading my Applications folder. Is there an easy way to auto-generate on a regular interval a text file that contains a list of the applications in this folder and then upload it to Dropbox so that I can use it as a guide to reinstall my applications? (Michael Henry, @imichaelhenry)
I suggest using Hazel for this, Mike. The great thing about Hazel is that it is folder based. To create a text file at regular intervals that is saved to Dropbox all you need to do is set up Hazel to monitor your Applications folder and then pick a frequency to run the script you see in the screenshot. That script creates a list of apps in that folder and then saves them to a plain text file. You’ll have to modify the script to reflect your own directory path to your Dropbox folder.
And now, some member feedback for a workflow request from Issue 33 on presentations with multiple outputs.
Suggestion: That cannot be solved by Workflow, but a solution is available in Microsoft Office – linking documents with OLE (Object Linking and Embedding).
Apple once had similar technology called OpenDoc, but Steve Jobs killed it when he returned to Apple in 1997. Currently, iWork doesn’t support Microsoft Office’s OLE, so an Apple software solution does not exist.
Microsoft Office’s OLE support across platforms outside Windows is not clear, but at least the Mac version should work. It seems like Google Docs is not supporting OLE either, but embedded Google Docs inside webpages for slideshows should also work. (Denken, @denkeni)
Suggestion: To me it sounds like Mark wants to have three presentation-related outputs updated automatically from one input. I think what would actually suit the underlying requirement is one source that can generate three different outputs on demand – i.e. maintain all content in one place and outputs are generated each time (replacing previous outputs) filtering out only the content required for that output.
Assuming this is an appropriate way to tackle the issue, I would use a combination of presenter notes and alternating in hidden slides into the slide deck – a set of standalone slides, a set of slides with presenter notes, and a set of slides with student notes. In addition, when run the slide deck would display only the presentation slides and it would have the presenter notes up on the presenter’s private display.
This approach is certainly achievable with both Keynote and PowerPoint on the Mac and I’ve written up my approach along with providing a sample presentation and outputs for each app. This can be found here.
The approach could also be sped up (as noted in the blog post) by the use of an AppleScript or a Keyboard Maestro macro to automate the generation of the outputs. (Stephen)
WEEKLY Q&A
Your weekly correspondence with the MacStories team.
Question: Sunrise Calendar is sunsetting in August. I’ve learned some alternatives and read individual reviews from MacStories for apps like Fantastical, Outlook, Moleskine Timepage, and Calendars 5. But how do they compare? (Denken, @denkeni)
The short version: I haven’t found another calendar app that comes with a) the same third-party service integrations of the old Sunrise and b) a polished, native iOS client.
That being said – and I do wish someone would take on Sunrise’s mantle for productivity-based integrations – here’s how I look at my three favorite calendar apps for iOS:
- Outlook: a combination of email and calendar. Microsoft wants to replace Sunrise with Outlook, but it doesn’t have all of the integrations of the old service such as Todoist and Evernote. It’s likely that Wunderlist (also owned by Microsoft) will eventually be supported by Outlook.
- Fantastical: the best app with natural language support, native Calendar and Reminders integration, and a whole suite of apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. The most powerful calendar client for iOS power users at the moment.
- Timepage: top notch interface design (I’ll go on the record and say I wouldn’t be surprise if this wins an Apple Design Award this year) with tons of UI customization options, a Watch app, and a unique use of gestures. Still no iPad support, but I think this is the calendar app to keep an eye on for the future. It’s one of the best iPhone apps I’ve seen in recent years in terms of visual design and user experience.
I’m giving Timepage a try as my calendar app lately, and, so far, I’m pretty happy with it.
Question: Have you found a better way to organize songs in playlist in Spotify? I would love to be able to select multiple songs but the iPad version doesn’t even have a queue. Do you know of any other apps or workflows instead of always returning to my old MacBook to use the Spotify desktop app? (Mario, @_mocasio)
Sadly, you’re right – there’s no way to select multiple songs at once on Spotify for iPad, and you can’t view your queue, either. It’s quite the oversight from Spotify (there are threads about it on the forums, too), but I can’t fix this with automation and Workflow.
I haven’t personally tried any third-party Spotify playlist managers on iOS. Once again, if Club members have any recommendations, feel free to send them to us.
Question: Looking for an app or any idea to stream music from iPad to iPhone or vice versa without necessarily syncing the same content. some sort of airplay between two iOS devices without the use of Apple TV. (Jeremiah Ekow Sarpong, @jerryluti)
Unfortunately, this is not possible Jeremiah. In 2012, Rogue Amoeba, maker of the excellent audio streaming app Airfoil that I reviewed on MacStories, released an app called Airfoil Speakers for iOS that allowed iOS devices to act as AirPlay receivers, which is functionality that is not directly supported by Apple. Apple removed Airfoil Speakers from the App Store and only let it back onto the store when the AirPlay receiver functionality was removed. Since that time, iOS-to-iOS streaming has not been permitted.
Club member Dario sent us a note on using an iPad at work, and I wanted to publish it this week because it’s a good reminder of how others use computers and mobile devices.
I listen to a lot of podcasts in the Mac-related sphere (Canvas, Connected, ATP, etc.) and one of the consistent themes in the ongoing “Laptop vs iPad” debate is the assumption that everyone can freely choose between a MacBook or an iPad to get their work done. I realise everyone is just drawing on their own experience but the echo-chamber means you’re missing the perspective of people who don’t have that choice at all.
I work in finance and like most people with a “J-O-B” job that isn’t as a journalist or a programmer I get very little choice in what tech I can use to get my job done. It’s either a Dell running Windows 7 or nothing. However, one of the big shifts in white-collar jobs is the move to allow staff to bring their own device – but only if it’s iOS or Android.
iOS with its sandbox model, default encryption, and dependence on the cloud for storing anything is a totally different ball-game. Most big employers in the finance world (and others dealing with confidential data like healthcare) are only happy letting me use an iPad or iPhone. The problem with a MacBook is that the company can’t lock down that device sufficiently to be comfortable with letting me use it.
I know you no longer even engage with this debate and I’m with you. My iPad is the best tool for me to do my job but it’s also the only tool I can pick if I don’t want to be using Windows 7 with a terrible trackpad from Dell. It also means my personal life and my work life can coexist on the same machine. Before the iPad, I was carrying a work laptop and a personal one around most days.
The next time someone writes yet another article about how they’d always opt for a MacBook to do some writing, or build an Excel file, or anything else to do their job, let’s remember that for many, many people the only choice is a locked down, used-for-work-only PC and not a shiny new Apple laptop.
Dario
Have you got a question for the MacStories team? If you do, you can submit it here. Your question can be about almost anything, it doesn’t need to be related to iOS or Apple.
ONGOING DEVELOPMENT
Trying new things, seeing what works, and discarding what doesn't.
Anatomy of an App Launch
App launches can be scary because there is so much you don’t control – like App Review and the press, for instance. But with a little luck, and the experience to know how to recognize and capitalize on an opportunity, app launches can also be a whole lot of fun.
Last week I launched Associate, an Amazon affiliate linking app similar to my iTunes affiliate linking app, Blink. Associate is a collaboration with my son Owen. I knew there was demand for an Amazon affiliate linking app, but didn’t have time to tackle the project on my own. Owen, who has published several iOS apps himself, had the time as he headed into the last few months of his senior year of high school, so I asked him to build Associate based on the design of Blink’s action extension. I handled the beta and the launch.
The Associate launch started with an unanticipated bang. I was riding the train home two Fridays ago thinking about Associate and looking through my photo library on my iPhone when I came across a screenshot of the Associate and Blink icons. I knew Owen was a day or two away from submitting Associate to App Review and I hadn’t teased Associate in a while, so I posted the screenshot on Twitter with a note that it was launching soon:
I really didn’t expect much of a response to the tweet, but as tweets sometimes mysteriously do, it took off, generating a steady stream of retweets, likes, and replies that lasted well into the next day. It was great, but I wasn’t ready for it. I didn’t even have a website ready – all I had had a Twitter account with an egg avatar and no bio. But this was where experience and having Owen to help paid off.
The first step was to activate the Associate Twitter account and started directing people there to learn more. Next, I created a one page preview site using Squarespace’s ‘Cover Page’ template featuring the app’s icon, a short description of what Associate does, an email newsletter signup form, and a link to a Press Kit.
Meanwhile, Owen went through final testing of Associate and started the laborious process of getting the metadata together for App Review. We tentatively set the launch date for May 17th, ten days in the future in case App Review took a while. We were just beginning to hear from other developers that app review times had dropped dramatically, but as of May 7th it wasn’t clear whether these were one-off cases, so we estimated App Review would take about a week.
By Saturday night, Owen submitted Associate to App Review. Now we had screenshots and an app description. I added those and other things to the press kit as they were completed. By Sunday night, everything was in place.
On Monday, after about 36 hours, Associate went into review and was rejected for a metadata violation. It was an easy problem to fix, and to App Review’s credit, they gave us examples of what we could do to fix the problem. The app was resubmitted within an hour and approved by the end of the day.
As soon as Associate was approved pending developer release, we set May 17th as the launch date. In hindsight, we probably could have launched Associate as early as Thursday, May 12th, but I knew it would take me some time to line up press coverage and I didn’t want to set a release date that would make it hard for anyone to cover the launch. If there’s just one piece of advice I would give other app developers it’s: ‘Be patient and don’t rush your launch, especially the part where you are asking people to cover your app.’ Associate sat ready for release for eight seemingly endless days, but on balance, I think the date we picked was just about perfect.
Having a week gave me time to send emails to the press and get them on the beta several days before launch. Writing emails asking for reviews is time consuming and hard. The messages have to be short, personalized, and grab the recipient’s attention without coming across as over-the-top or needy.
The timing also gave the press plenty of time to download Associate, try it, and write a review. Even people who want to write about your app are busy. Giving them artificial or aspirational launch dates, or too little time to evaluate your app just increases the chance that it won’t be covered. Remember, you’re asking the press to spend time on your app over another one – make it easy and respect their time.
The hardest period before launch was the gap between adding the press to the beta and actually launching because I didn’t have much to do. I answered a few questions about the app, but mostly I waited. This is the point at which I always fall into a sort of negative funk about a project. I saw that coming though, so threw myself into some MacStories writing to get my mind off of Associate.
The final stressful moment was the timing of the launch. I scheduled Associate to go live at 10:00 AM Central time in the US. As all developers know, however, that’s not the time the app will show up in the store. Propagation of an app can take hours in some instances, which can become a problem for websites that want to publish during peak traffic hours.
Fortunately, Associate showed up in the App Store within about fifteen minutes. The rest of the day was a blur and the best part. Associate was covered by about twenty websites and was widely linked on Twitter.
When things calmed down, I caught up on Twitter, read the reviews, and evaluated the launch. It went better than I anticipated. The coverage was great and as a result, Associate sold roughly one-third more copies than Blink did in its first week, which is especially nice considering that the Amazon Associates program is available in only about a dozen countries compared to the iTunes Affiliate Program’s 149.
I attribute part of the success of the Associate launch to my experience. I also have more contacts in the press than I did when I launched Blink and have a better perspective on how to work with the press since writing for MacStories. But a lot of the success was luck. I hit Twitter with a tease at precisely the right moment and we launched just before Google I/O, which created a vacuum of tech news. But I am luckiest of all to have had the assistance of Owen and a lot of good friends who helped test Associate and spread the word about it.
Previous Ongoing Development Topics:
INTERESTING LINKS
Great reads and links from around the web.
Spotify has launched a cheaper family plan to match the one offered in Apple Music. Pretty good deal.
The new TouchPad and NumPad come with some important updates, but also an intriguing business model for iOS apps.
Ben Thompson with some good points on the challenges Google faces by not “owning” their customers.
Speaking of Google, get ready for promoted pins to show up on Google Maps.
Netatmo, makers of connected home devices, are launching a developer platform to integrate with other apps and services.
Adonit has launched a new stylus to better compete with Apple’s Pencil. The Pixel works with any iPad that has Bluetooth 4.0 support, it has pressure sensitivity, palm rejection, and physical shortcut buttons.
Apple’s Notes app and its role in college sports recruiting. That’s not a use case you hear every day.
APP DEBUTS
Noteworthy new app releases and updates, handpicked by the MacStories team.
Hemingboard
Hemingboard is a thesaurus app that puts synonyms, rhymes, and even puns in a custom keyboard. It’s very easy to select alternative words for what you’re typing, and this can come in handy when writing long posts and notes on iOS.
Vitals
Vitals is a new iPhone app to track and visualize blood pressure data. Thanks to HealthKit integration, you’ll be able to add data points with the external blood pressure monitor you might already have; in the app, you can then chart pressure by time, view averages, and share readings with your physician.
Marsbot
Foursquare has launched a chat bot for local recommendations called Marsbot. The goal is to keep the app installed so it’ll learn your taste for restaurants you visit over time; after a while, it’ll start texting you (via SMS) suggesting places on its own. Currently rolling out to users in New York and San Francisco first.
WRIO Keyboard
Someone is always trying to revolutionize the way we type on smartphones and WRIO is no different. This custom keyboard has a peculiar honeycomb layout (not QWERTY) and it promises to speed up typing on the iPhone by up to 70% compared to other keyboards. WRIO supports themes, multiple languages at once, emoji, and gestures.
Thoughts
Thoughts brings an infinite canvas for sketching on iOS. You can zoom and pan around as much as you like and you’ll never lose the vector quality of your sketches. Thoughts has Apple Pencil support and even iCloud sync and a dark mode.
Morning Mail
What if you could use an email client that separated new email from everything else and had a Tinder-like interface to quickly triage messages? The answer would be something similar to Morning Mail, which is free to try with a $4.99 In-App Purchase to unlock multiple mailboxes. Novel concept with a nice visual design.
Unfade
Developed by the creators of Scanbot, Unfade uses a similar technology to automatically detect photographs from old albums, crop them, and bring them back to life by reviving their colors. If you’ve been looking for a way to digitize old photos and archive them digitally with better colors, this could be worth a shot.
GIFwrapped
GiFwrapped is a great iOS app if you want to keep your own collection of favorite GIFs synced to Dropbox for easy use. This week it got updated to support the iPad Pro, Split Screen, and you can now Peek and Pop on GIFs if you have an iPhone 6s with 3D Touch.
STRAW POLL
Opinions on Apple and technology generally, from Club MacStories members.
4. Control Center, Notification Center, Spotlight & Extensions on iOS
Written Responses
Favorite Today Widgets
- Fantastical
- Workflow
- Launcher
- Pedometer++
- PCalc
- Drafts
- Weather Underground
- Dark Sky
- Copied
Favorite Share Extensions
- Instapaper
- Notes
- Telegram
- 2Do
- Linky
- Drafts
- Slack
- Message
Favorite Action Extensions
- 1Password
- Workflow
- Dropbox
- Copied
- Pythonista
- OmniFocus
- Open in Safari
- Blink
HOME SCREENS
Friends of MacStories share their iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch Home screens.
My iPhone Home screen is in a state of constant evolution. I’ve always liked to have my icons arranged by color, and there are so many more ways to arrange that than one would think. The possibilities are truly endless.
I carry a notebook with me instead of a wallet. The idea is to use it to jot down quick notes on coworkers’ coffee orders, locker codes, or other such things. However, I don’t always remember to keep a pen (or even my notebook) on me. This is where Cheatsheet comes in. It makes quickly creating notes with 3D Touch shortcuts a breeze, and the notes are then easily accessible from anywhere with a keyboard and a Today widget.
Streaks is another great productivity tool with a permanent spot on my Home screen. It motivates me to stay on top of things like my creativity or physical health with a notification bubble on the icon and periodic reminders throughout the day. When I’ve taken my photo or worked out for the day, I can quickly check it off the list using notification actions or 3D Touch shortcuts.
I read a lot in my spare time. I love learning about new concepts or gadgets or political issues, and as such, I’m drowning in articles to read. Pocket is a must-have for organizing and discovering new reading material for reading junkies like myself.
A couple of niche apps I use regularly are Adobe Capture and Dexter. Adobe Capture is a handy tool for creatives of all kinds, allowing the user to create color palettes from images of the world around them or to create detailed vector images using their phone’s camera. Adobe Capture is an indispensable tool for illustrators who sketch on paper and then ink digitally.
On the other end of the productive spectrum, Dexter is a Pokédex app. It is fantastic for planning teams, researching moves, or even just catching ‘em all. Dexter is a great resource for competitive and casual Pokémon players alike.
If you want more information about my Home screen, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter @adverbed.
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